


Like Real People Do

by LadyNogs



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Necromancy, Temporary Character Death, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, i blame the discord for this, no beta we die like renfri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:35:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27467293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyNogs/pseuds/LadyNogs
Summary: Geralt is buried, and Yennefer is unwilling to accept such a terrible thing.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 11
Kudos: 34





	Like Real People Do

**Author's Note:**

> Several of the things that appear in this fic are Polish funerary traditions - many of which are Jewish with a heavy helping of Slavic paganism as seen through a medieval Catholic lens.
> 
> I have implied that witchers lean heavier toward the Slavic pagan side of things, with the bulk of the Continent leaning more Catholic (read, Church of the Eternal Fire), with a strong Jewish influence.
> 
> Hence - covering the mirrors, and turning the chairs upside down, and preparation of the corpse.
> 
> The rest of it is my own twist on a fantasy world. Heavily inspired by the song of the same name, and credit for the original prompt idea goes to Discord.

It had been a good wake.

Zoltan had brought a demijohn of Temerian vodka, a handful of friends, and Jaskier, who had sung every sad lay and ballad he knew until even his voice ran dry and hoarse and he merely hummed over the quiet plucking of his lute. Regis had bowed to her, and poured a measure of his deadly mandrake cordial over her threshold. Eskel and Lambert had stood watch, at the doorway, hanging the birch and nailing a scrap of black silk to the door. Yennefer had felt each blow of the hammer like it was her flesh they were piercing, instead of the thick pine that Geralt had sanded smooth and painted last spring.

Ciri had helped her cover the mirrors, silent and cold and refusing what little comfort Yennefer could offer. She had never been made for comfort, not even in this, and though she had lost a husband, Ciri had lost a father, and Yen could not imagine a world in which she could feel even a fraction of that grief.

She had insisted, when the healer had offered, on preparing his body herself, and she had worked by candlelight, without a single breath of Chaos, to clean his limbs of the signs of his death, to set right the torn flesh with needle and thread, to wash and comb his hair, to lay him out on the table in the cellar and wrap him in the thick white linen that would become his shroud. He was heavier than she expected, as though death had made him more present, more solid, than he had ever been in life. She had bathed his corpse with a tenderness she rarely held for anyone, and had never dared to show him in life. Here, at the end of things, she could be soft, when he had already hurt her as much as he could.

That first night, she had sat in the little sitting room, with all the windows open, and let the howling wind of late autumn carry the sound of her weeping away. She wove a crown of hawthorn, leaves bright as the blood that he had spilled, and set it on his brow with a kiss.

The second night, she sorted through the detritus of a century-long life, packing away his clothing in sweet cedar, his swords in oil and linen, clearing away all sign that this house had ever been anything but solely hers, until her hands were red from scrubbing, and her throat was raw.

The third night, then, was Geralt’s wake. All the people who had loved him, who had known him, who had touched his life, and hers, came limping in from the cold of the night, to warm themselves at her hearth and tip up the chairs to keep him from lingering. She hated it. She hated the light and the heat and the sorrow that spilled from her daughter, hated the songs and the laughter and the way that each of his friends tied scraps of dusty black linen around their arms, like crows come to feast, hated the way her pulse thundered in her ears whenever she looked at them.

Eskel and Lambert wore their armor, and their swords, and stood with their backs to the light and passed a flask between them without a word, their breath a pale cloud in the chill of the night, and Yennefer sat with her back to the door, Geralt’s brothers standing vigil, like a queen without a throne, and watched the firelight flicker over his cold skin like the worst parody of life.

It had been Eskel who had found him. Eskel, with his broad shoulders and his scarred face and his guilt, who had extracted his brother from the root-stricken clearing and gathered his silver sword from the heart of the leshen that killed him. There was still a deep nick in the blade, which Yennefer had left, the silver plating chipped away. It had been chance, not fate, not Destiny, that milk-faced bitch, who had led him to the leshen’s lair and his brother’s cooling blood, but no witcher ever died in his bed, and in some way, Yennefer knew, Eskel was glad of his brother’s death.

Dawn was inexorable, and as the wake died down, Yennefer could feel the sun pressing on the darkness like a migraine, like a bruise, and she felt rather than heard the sigh as the witchers at her back sank away from their vigil, content that their brother would not rise as something terrible, something that would require them to turn their blades on he who they loved. She caught the whisper of what seemed almost a prayer, though in no language she had ever learned, from both their minds, almost without having to try. Eskel laid a hand on her shoulder, wide and warm and heavy, heavy like the stone of his grief, heavy like Geralt’s corpse laid out on the kitchen table, heavy like the choking, bleeding knot in her throat, and she laid her own hand over his for a moment, and then he and Lambert melted away from her door, vanishing into the thin fog that had risen in the woods around the house. Yennefer wondered if she’d ever see them again, now that the only thing that tied them was gone.

Regis had been the one to build the coffin, a simple thing of new pine, still pale and reeking. He had smoothed the raw planks with the same steadiness he showed with a scalpel, fitting the joints together and pounding them tight with thin shims, and it was Regis who lifted Geralt into it, cradling him like a child, and Yennefer felts her nails cut into her palms, quite apart from any will to do so. Ciri stood across from him, her eyes rimmed in red, and Yennefer watched as her daughter gave the body the kiss of peace before turning away.

The walk to the clearing she had chosen was not long, but it felt as though it lasted hours. And then there were the speeches, the little snippets of prayer that she and Geralt could tolerate, and then Regis lowered the coffin into the grave and she and Ciri and Jaskier and Regis and Zoltan and all the rest each tossed in a handful of the rich, black soil, pattering on the lid and Yennefer felt the rage she had held back for three days bubble up like poison in a wound, felt her Chaos leap to her fingertips. It wasn’t _fair_. She could feel Ciri’s cold-ivy-acid surge of Chaos rise in answer, could feel the ripple of dark water that was the vampire Geralt called friend, the hot copper spark of the mortals that ringed the grave, and she struggled to keep from snuffing each and every one of those lights out, to make them as dark and cold and empty as the body now resting in that tomb of pine and earth, to make them all match, but she knew that Geralt would never want that, would never want to drag with him all the people he fought so hard to save, and Yennefer swallowed her Chaos down again, buried it like she had to bury her husband, and swayed back into the rest of the world, where Geralt was dead, and she was burying him, denying him the fire that was his birthright.

She used her Chaos to move the rest of the earth into the grave and smooth it down into obscurity.

* * *

  
  


The night she brought him back, the rain had soaked her in moments after she stepped out the door.

She had studied the spell long ago, in the dark years that stretched before she found Ciri, the daughter of her heart. It was a simple thing, almost crude in its nature, to call back the soul, to reinhabit dead flesh. All it took was a little sacrifice. Yennefer was no stranger to sacrifice. She had bartered more than this, on more than one occasion, to get what she wanted, and what she wanted now, more than anything, was to never feel this house so empty again, never reach in the night to find only the chill of finespun sheets.

So she gathered what she needed, the herbs, and the bowl, and the knife Geralt had always worn at his belt, with the split in the handle that caught on her hands, and the goat she had lured into the barn with a handful of oats and a flicker of magic. The goat complained, bleating into the night, as she led it to the clearing where Geralt’s grave still lay barren and slick with rain, a wound in the earth that she felt in her bones. The ground was wet, and the soil was heavy, and digging took her from dusk to nearly midnight, but at last the lid of the coffin was spattered with rain, and the little hooded lantern she had brought with her cast flickering shadows across the slick wood and heavy mud.

The goat bleated plaintively, and Yennefer sighed. Three hairs from its chin, and then the knife across her forearm, and she filled the bowl as she chanted the words - not Elder, the elves were never much for necromancy, but the older tongues, of hills and mountainsides. She wondered if Geralt would recognize it.

The lid of the coffin was harder to pull off, now that it had swollen with the rain, but she put her back into it and it gave way with a groan that the rain could not silence. Geralt lay still and cold within, wrapped in linen, and she couldn’t resist the urge to lay her hand beside his face, so serene and quiet in death, the line between his brows smoothed in a way that sleep never touched.

He was warm, under her hand, and she jerked her hand back before she could stop herself, but then his eyelids fluttered, his lips parted, and breath moved his lungs in a sigh, and she felt the first pulse of true fear as he turned his head, seeking her touch, as he always did when she showed him tenderness.

It took her nearly an hour to get him out of the grave and back to the house.

He was still heavy, so heavy, and though he breathed and shifted, when his lids rolled back his golden eyes were clouded and vague, pupils fluttering in the wavering light of her lantern, unfocussed. She ushered him into their bedroom, and he swayed into her touch like a vine seeking the light, but he let her strip him out of the shroud and wipe away the mud that darkened his pale skin, the echo of her ablutions ringing hollow and aching beneath her breastbone, and she laid him down in their bed on the cool, crisp sheets, and watched the rise and fall of his chest as he shifted under her gaze.

“Yen,” he murmured, as she curled up beside him, feeling his arm rise up around her, feeling him pull her closer, and she laid her head on his chest to hear the steady thrum of his heart beneath her ear. She could see the faint outline of her stitches along his ribs, the dark thread stark in the dim light of the candle on the nightstand. “How long?”

“Long enough, Geralt.” She lifted herself up to look down at him, seeing him focus on her face slowly. He smiled, soft and quiet, and there was something wrong in it, something missing. “Now kiss me, witcher.” That smile, his hand in her hair, and she pressed her lips to his, like there was nothing wrong at all, and ignored the taste of his death in her mouth.


End file.
